For SEIU, Obama and Occupy

By Ben Smith

11/17/11 03:19 PM EST

The Service Employees International Union, a political powerhouse on the Democratic side, made its early endorsement of Barack Obama yesterday; today, its president Mary Kay Henry is in New York for an Occupy demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.

With Obama and Democrats trying to benefit from the energy of the Occupy movement while keeping it at arm's length, I asked her how those two things go together.

"There’s an economic emergency in this country and both things are required in order to turn this country around for working people," Henry said. "The president has been fighting for American families by introducing the American Jobs Act. The Occupy Wall Street movement has made an incredible case to the country about this gross economic inequality. These two movements work together incredibly well."

Henry said she wasn't sure where the Occupy movement will go from here, but said SEIU will support it.

"I’m really confident that the local control, local decision making is going to create a new path for the next phase of the Occupy movement," she said. "We will support whatever the decision making is inside of the movement."

I also asked Henry about something I'd heard recently from inside SEIU, that she'd taken personal control of the union's political operation, marking a bit of an internal power shift.

"We wanted to unite the political and organizing work in the union as we head into the 2012 election," she said. "We really want to think about how our organizing campaigns in inner cities are connected to the African-American voter turnout and education that we want to do."